But everyone’s expression was grim.
They had only just entered, yet even the lowest-ranked Void Beast was already this difficult to deal with.
“We can’t keep this up. We have to break through.”
Qin Wu was just about to charge forward under the cover of fire when a hand pressed down on his shoulder.
It was Chen Guan.
“What are you doing?”
Qin Wu froze.
Chen Guan didn’t look at him. His gaze remained fixed on the crystal jungle, which shimmered with a dangerous light.
“Something’s wrong,” he said softly.
“What’s wrong?”
An Changqing asked while maintaining the curtain of sword light.
The warning growl rumbling in Baobao’s throat grew increasingly urgent. Yet those golden, slit-pupiled eyes weren’t staring at the glowing crystals. They were fixed on the area behind the crystal jungle.
There was something there.
Something larger.
Something far more dangerous.
The Crystal Shooters were merely bait meant to draw their prey’s attention—or, more accurately, just one part of its body.
“Good instincts, kid,” Baal praised him. “That’s right. The big one’s hiding in the back. Once you’re exhausted from playing with these little turrets, it’ll come out and harvest you.”
“These things are alive, but there’s something wrong over there.” Chen Guan’s gaze passed over the Crystal Shooters and settled on the ordinary-looking gray fungal mat behind them. He pointed at it. “That area.”
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
Another wave of spikes shot toward them, denser than before.
An Changqing’s curtain of sword light rippled in concentric circles, blocking most of the attacks.
“We need to find a way to get rid of them,” Long Ao said as he easily knocked away the remaining projectiles.
“Baobao.”
Chen Guan suddenly spoke in a low voice.
Baobao, which had been crouching beside his feet and growling, immediately raised its head. Its golden, slit-pupiled eyes turned toward him.
“Attack that patch of ground.”
The instant Chen Guan finished speaking, Baobao’s body transformed into a purple blur and vanished from the spot.
The next moment, a sharp sound split the air. A streak of purple lightning appeared over the patch of fungal mat Chen Guan had indicated.
The moment Baobao’s attack touched the ground, it vanished without a trace.
The gray-white fungal mat, however, came alive.
Like a boulder thrown into a body of water, it sent out visible waves.
Then the entire floating island began to tremble.
The fungal mat beneath their feet churned violently. The flat ground where they had been standing suddenly bulged upward.
The beautiful Crystal Shooters were torn from the ground, revealing that they were not independent creatures at all.
Their roots were all connected to a gigantic, constantly writhing mass of flesh.
A massive mouth.
That wasn’t a metaphor.
The ground beneath the area where everyone had been standing split open in a colossal crack nearly a hundred meters long.
Both sides of the fissure rose upward, revealing countless ghastly white teeth inside, densely packed like steel spikes.
The place they had been standing was the mouth of some enormous creature—and it was closing.
The spot Baobao had attacked was the creature’s upper palate.
“This is its true form: a Groundjaw Beast, a mimetic predator.”
Only then did Sima Ming speak, adding an explanation. “An adult Groundjaw Beast can reach the ninth rank and is extremely dangerous. However, this one hasn’t matured yet. Adult specimens are all captured by the Great Wall.”
With his strength, he had naturally seen through its true species from the very beginning.
Sima Ming hadn’t said anything at first because he wanted to see whether any of the students could notice something amiss before he did.
As expected, his prized student had already seen through it.
Chen Guan stared at the slowly closing maw. Deep within it, a core radiating a faint purple light pulsed like a beating heart.
Now that was the real treasure.
“Hurry! Run!”
The voice of a first-year student who had never seen anything so terrifying trembled with tears. He stared at the enormous upper jaw closing overhead as the patch of sky was rapidly swallowed by darkness.
The fungal mat beneath their feet had become slick and wet. It was the beast’s tongue. Countless translucent strands of mucus-covered flesh reached up from below and coiled toward their ankles.
A flash of sword light swept from An Changqing’s hand, severing every strand of flesh that lunged toward them.
With a thunderous shout, Long Ao bent his legs and planted himself firmly on the writhing fleshy tongue like a nail driven into the ground. He clenched both fists, the joints cracking sharply.
He stared at the ghastly white teeth hanging down like mountain peaks, his fighting spirit soaring.
“Break its teeth, and we’ll get out!”
Boom!
Long Ao drove his fist into the base of one of the inverted teeth, producing a muffled explosion that made everyone’s eardrums ache.
The tooth, which was taller than Long Ao himself, merely trembled. Spiderweb-like cracks spread across its surface, and a few pieces of stone broke loose.
It was still nowhere near being shattered.
“Pretty tough,” Long Ao muttered, shaking his numb fist. The muscles in his arm bulged like tangled tree roots.
On the other side, An Changqing’s sword light wove together into a river of stars, shredding the strands of mucus-covered flesh that stabbed up from the tongue and shielding several first-year students whose legs had already gone weak.
They were, after all, only first-years. They had never faced anything this terrifying. Only Shan Heng remained relatively calm.
Shan Heng glanced upward. There was only one final slit of daylight remaining, and darkness had already swallowed the surroundings. The stench in the air mingled with despair, tightening his expression as well.
If this continued, they would either be crushed to pieces or digested alive.
“Heh heh, kid, aren’t you going to make a move?” Baal’s voice echoed in Chen Guan’s mind. “Wait any longer, and your classmates really will become its dinner.”
Chen Guan ignored Baal.
His gaze passed over Long Ao, whose fists generated waves of pressure, and An Changqing, who was protecting everyone with his sword light. It locked firmly onto the depths of the enormous maw.
There, in the darkness of the throat, a massive purple core throbbed like a heart. With every beat, the churning of the entire mouth became more violent.
That was the Groundjaw Beast’s true weak point.
Breaking its teeth was nothing but a waste of effort.
“There’s no need to trouble yourselves.”
Chen Guan took two steps into the depths of the writhing tongue. The slick sensation beneath his feet was nauseating.
He stopped and extended one hand. A scythe appeared in his grasp.
“Stand firm,” Chen Guan said.
Before his words had even faded, a flash of purple light erupted, and his figure vanished from where he stood.
When he appeared again, he had crossed nearly a hundred meters and was standing directly before the enormous purple core.
“Roar!”
The Groundjaw Beast had clearly sensed the lethal threat. Every strand of mucus-covered flesh inside its mouth surged madly toward Chen Guan.
Chen Guan raised his scythe.
A thin black line flashed through the air.
Slice.
Time itself seemed to freeze.
Every strand of flesh rushing toward him stopped in midair.
A matching black line had appeared across the center of the violently pulsing purple core.
The next second—
Splurt!
Every strand of flesh touched by the black line cleanly separated into two pieces. They lost all vitality and fell as drops of slime.
The enormous core, meanwhile, split neatly in two like a watermelon cut by the world’s fastest blade, purple fluid spraying everywhere.
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
u Chenyuan transmigrated into a female-oriented novel about a real and fake heiress, becoming the CEO elder brother of both. Unfortunately, the entire Lu family—including himself, the CEO—were mere cannon fodder in the story. Determined to save himself, Lu Chenyuan took action. The spoiled, attention-seeking fake heiress? Thrown into the harsh realities of the working class to learn humility. The love-struck real heiress? Pushed toward academic excellence, so lofty goals would blind her to trivial romances. As for the betrayed, vengeful arranged marriage wife… the plot hadn’t even begun yet. There was still time—if he couldn’t handle her, he could at least avoid her. "CEO Lu, are you avoiding me?" Mo Qingli fixed her gaze on Lu Chenyuan. For the first time, the shrewd and calculating Lu Chenyuan felt a flicker of unease.
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
